Man's Oldest Enemy

If you wanted to give a psychological evaluation of a political ideology it would be easy to label conservatives as fearful. If you wanted to spin it nicely you might call it cautious. The right prospers during lean times. That is to say it survives during lean times. No one prospers then. Winter is coming is the Stark family motto. It could be a conservative motto as well. It's no wonder then that the right is full of Christians, apocalyptic prophets, and white people.

And the left? How would we diagnose that group? It's not pretty. Messiah complex might work. They have a penchant for fixing things, saving things, or at least attempting to fix and save things. Their plans always fail because they don't read history. For the progressive left cracking opening a history book is like peering into a horror novel too ghastly and terrible to be considered something to draw wisdom from. It's only purpose is a warning sign. To the left the future is always bright, sunny, without a cloud on the horizon. The 87 trillion dollar liabilities don't matter. The economy is fine. Ignore the muslims. Intolerance is the problem.

You know what else the left is? Maniacal, ego maniacs. You can't be the lord savior without first being the lord. And that means power. You can't look at the world and want to fix it unless you're certain that you can fix it, that everyone else who tried didn't care as much and wasn't as smart as you. Obviously, since you're certain of success and morality then your way is clear. But this egoism is rarely backed up by any real accomplishment, any real understanding of history, any long term projections into the future. They don't read history remember and they're known as bleeding heart liberals for a reason. They feel first and rationalize later. That's fine during spring, summer, and fall but during a winter anyone who doesn't plan ahead doesn't survive.

The difference between the left and the right in america is drawn on a map. You can see it. Red state. Blue state. More importantly, the distinction is made between a mostly rural environment and a mostly urban environment. Cities tend toward leftism and there is no surprise that the growth of the modern city and the modern state coincide. With the loss of survival through agrarian means either untenable or impossible the ruralite makes the sojourn into the metropolis in search of employment. A job replaces the farm and understanding political teachings becomes more important than understanding harvest season.

Nature is cyclical. A season to all things. A time to build and a time to destroy but once cut off from nature, isolated within concrete, disconnected from the seasons, the bounty, and most importantly the winter, the urbanite forgets about nature. At worst it becomes a nuisance - like conservatives - something to hem and haw over but nothing of any real concern. A rainy day when you planned your picnic. Scraping windows on your commute to work. Those who live close to the natural world know better. Mother nature is aptly described as a woman, beautiful and alluring at times but fierce and ruthless.

If man has made eternal war against anything it is nature. It's true. Before an environmentalist shirks in horror and composes a eulogy over the death of trees consider that this war is not what we've come to know war as. There are two types of war with two different goals, one to dominate and another to destroy. The war against nature is our oldest struggle, our greatest conflict, but it is not one to destroy. Man seeks domination over nature by mastering gravity, by taming the forest, harnessing the energy of the sun or the atom. Only the suicidal would seek to destroy nature.

The significance of all this in the right/left divide is their relationship to nature. As much as the environmentalists lament the death of trees and compose dirges to sunflowers, their war against nature is the same as others. The left's battle with nature is against human nature and instinct. When it denies that gender exists beyond social construct it denies nature. When it denies racial differences it denies nature. It is an inner world and an inner conflict the leftist struggle with. Disconnected from where their food comes from, cut off from the source of their clothing, from the cycle of life and death, they believe they have bested the natural world without and focus their attention on the conflict within human nature.

Adaptation is reflex. Changes in the environment can create the atmosphere for changes in ideology. Cities produce dependency. Rural environments produce self-reliance. City kids are summer kids born to recline on the beach listening to the waves and pluck fruit from the hanging limbs. Free from the seasons of nature they forget nature believing it pacified. The march goes on. More left and left and their ever victorious army will not be stopped by anything but man's greatest enemy.